


Wine

by indaco



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Alcohol, Also....dare I say it?, Awkward Family Dinners, Character Study, DysFUNctional families, Everyone At Elsinore Is Fucking Terrible Is What I'm Getting At, Friendship, Gen, I dared to say it., M/M, Pre-Play, TW nonsense tags, This is just me practicing characterization and long descriptions if you cannot already tell, WLW and MLM solidarity!, implied alcoholism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-11-13 05:51:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18025943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indaco/pseuds/indaco
Summary: Revised conclusion: Horatio envies her.





	Wine

**Author's Note:**

> Here we go again! First try at a multi-chapter fic...even if it's just gonna be....two.

Horatio meets her at his first visit to Elsinore. 

He studies her, by way of nervous habit. To retreat into himself with detailed observation of those around him.

This is his conclusion: he pities her. 

_Ophelia-_ he recalls her name- sits flanked by her father and her brother. She’s quietly proud in her learned obedience. 

She is young, with a pretty face like Laertes, but sturdily built. Her broad shoulders rear back in a natural pride, chest puffed out, a posture she surely inherited from her father. Her hands are folded politely in front of her, their worn roughness veiled in feigned delicacy. She fiddles meaningfully with her fingers, fighting with something related to tact; (a trait she surely did _not_ inherit from her father.)

Ophelia is dressed in a masterfully made gown; colored aged white, sea-foamy, ethereal. The tides of fabric crash into her mid shoulders, betraying her pale and be-speckled skin. The gown bunches up in puffed, cloudy sleeves. Her skirt, so thick with layered fabric, practically drowns her. At first glance, it is simple, a bit loose in places- but it thrives in the details. Pearl-like beads line up to dance in cross-cross patterns across her chest, dipping each other down into the ripples of her skirt; resting among flowery, masterfully placed lace.

Hamlet, who sits beside Horatio, is buzzing with excitement. He doesn’t at all seem interested in her dress. He instead studies the nape of her neck, her shoulders- the way her curls rest and bounce there with conversational gesticulation- how her throat bobs when she laughs. His expression swallows up her softness, her _femininity_ , the way her lips curl and her jaw smooths. 

Revised conclusion: Horatio envies her. 

“Horatio?” Gertrude says, finishing her third glass of wine for the evening, “What did you say you studied?”

He smiles politely, “Philosophy, madam.” 

“Philosophy.” Gertrude makes a satisfied, noncommittal noise, derivative of a maternal hum of disinterest. Horatio revels in it.

She continues, “And you attend Wittenberg-?”

“He is my school friend, mother.” 

“Well, I don’t know about that.” Horatio replies dryly.

Hamlet chokes on a laugh and a mouthful of wine. The party follows him in polite laughter.

“We are friends, I must admit it” He reveals with no resistance, “We did have Latin together, I believe so.”

Hamlet snorts, “You believe so?”

He quirks an eyebrow in response, “You can remember our first year?” 

“What are you implying?”

“Nothing, my goodly, _studious_ lord,” Horatio teases.

“It is cruel to insult a gentle prince so!” Hamlet places an offended hand to his chest.

The table swallows up the entertainment of their banter. They’re giggling, and smiling- even The King’s mouth upturns in a smirk.

It urges Horatio on. 

“Gentle? As a maid?”

Hamlet loses the gist. His face breaks out into a genuine, eye squinting grin. He nearly guffaws in laughter, and Horatio kneels over with him.

“I yield,” Horatio smiles.

The table is warm in a way things are not warm in Elsinore. The chill of the castle is melted by room-temperature wine. Horatio feels comfortable here, around the prince. Around his family. 

Among royalty.

The laughter is still petering out of Horatio's voice when he says, “We did not start speaking till I began tutoring him.”

Hamlet tenses beside him. He places a quick, urgent hand on his knee. The table sobers. 

Ophelia hides her face in a cup of wine. She watches Hamlet with urgent eyes. 

The King frowns.

He addresses Hamlet without looking to him, “I did not know you needed tutoring.”

Gertrude calls over a servant, who quietly fills her wine glass. She brings the cup to her lips, saying nothing

“Hamlet.” Claudius speaks a warning to his brother.

He ignores it, “Are you falling behind in your classes?”

“He isn’t,” Horatio clarifies, keeping his voice light, “If anything, he’s encroaching on my-”

“I was not speaking to you.” The King snaps at him, “Hamlet. You were to write us if you had any issues with your academics. We would’ve found you a tutor-”

“I found _myself_ a tutor.” He defies, voice still wavering.

It’s not arguing, per-se. This is, in many perceivable ways to an outsider, a family who has never fought. He lets it fade to background noise, paying attention only to Hamlet’s body language. Physical cues, tensity and relaxation. Their own language. 

Horatio feels a gaze on the side of his neck. 

Ophelia is looking at him. Quite pointedly. Like she’s trying to communicate something to him as subtly as possible without gesturing or even moving her eyebrows. 

Her eyes, Horatio realizes, are the most striking thing about her. If one was to notice them first, they would fall completely into them. They stand out brilliantly among the rest of the Danes- brown- but a shade far darker than Horatio’s. If one was to look at her too quickly, they would mistake her irises for her pupils; as though they had, in love, dilated so wholly that they swallowed up the color of her eyes. 

He has no idea what she’s communicating to him, but it's urgent. Her hand twiddles with her wine glass, purposefully, tense.

“Laertes, have you taken any Latin courses?” Polonius asks, and Ophelia tears her gaze away from him, fixing instead on something distant. 

“I took one,” Laertes says plainly, his shoulders folding in on himself. 

“How hard was it for you?”

His eyes dart, almost erratically, but they land around Hamlet, “I don’t recall.”

“Surely you recall,” The King insists, “You are only a year and some older than Hamlet, couldn’t be that long.”

Something pokes out from Laertes’s jaw, he looks back to his father, “It was fine.”

The King turns to Laertes, “Did _you_ need a tutor?”

Polonius smiles proudly, “He didn’t.” 

The King hums.

Horatio processes two things wholly, only in their halved perception have they formed a full one.

The clattering of a chalice is the first. Laertes and Polonius launch out of their seats, chairs screeching on the tile, this is the second.

Ophelia hesitates before standing herself.

Wine is splattered across the front part of her white dress, soaking into the fabric.

She has not only managed to knock over her own glass but the half-full bottle in front of her. Wine bleeds into the fabric, droplets soaking into people’s food. The fermented smell harsh against Horatio’s nose.

“I’m sorry!” She cries.

A chorus of _It’s alright’s_ ring out from around the table. 

Polonius shakes out his hands, “Just go change, darling.” 

She leaves with an obedient nod.

The conversation changes pace then. Polonius apologizes on behalf of his daughter, Laertes glares at him. Servants stationed at the entrances and exit make no haste in cleaning the mess. Over their efforts, Gertrude begins to chat idly of nothing and everything, already accepting more wine from the servents. Polonius brings up France, Laertes expresses his approval at the concept. Hamlet, the elder of the two, listens with satisfaction. 

Hamlet, the younger, relaxes. Slowly unwinding. But there’s a nervousness that never quite leaves his eyes, a tensity that remains in his neck. He cranes it, looking to where Ophelia exited from. 

Horatio places his hand over Hamlet’s, where it still rests upon his knee. Hamlet looks to him, eyes softening, but holding evident concern. 

Horatio clears his throat, “If I may excuse myself…”

He can feel Hamlet smile. 

***

Ophelia’s door is, much to Horatio’s displeasure, open. 

She sits happily within her space. Her nimble hands braid her hair, taking their time to not miss a weave. The white dress has been replaced with a deep red, more traditional gown. Horatio smiles, wondering if she did that intentionally.

Horatio raps on the old wood twice, Ophelia startles from her vanity. She fixes him with a strange look through her mirror.

“Oh- Horatio?” Ophelia asks, already relaxing, “Did you need help finding something?”

“I told them I was finding the washroom,” He replies.

“Next hallway over.” She says, “Marcellus should be stationed indoors, tonight, he could show you-”

“I was looking for you, actually.”

She pauses, her dark eyes absorbing that strangeness, but goes back to braiding, “Could I get a reason why?”

“Well, ah,” He regrets coming here nearly immediately, “That had to be embarrassing.”

“Oh!” She giggles, “I’ve known everyone at that table since I was a baby.” 

“Except me.”

Ophelia’s gaze turns incredulous. A scoff, half formed, dies on her lips.

“I knew _you_ wouldn’t scorn me for it,” She says, not as an estimation of character, but as a fact.

Horatio’s eyebrows knit together. She smiles.

He breaks the silence with a nod toward the stained dress, now draped across her bed, “So, will a maid, or, nurse, or- they handle this?”

She turns, glancing at the dress, then looking pointedly at him, “You weren’t raised in a castle, were you?”

“Is it obvious?”

“Just barely,” She says lightly, “Sounds like a dream.”

“Well-” Horatio chuckles nervously, “Will someone clean this for you?”

“Oh, no, it’s definitely ruined,” Ophelia says, unbothered.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” 

“I can start a new one.” She ties off the braid effortlessly.

Horatio pauses.

“Did you make that dress?”

Something uncharacteristic washes over her. She smirks.

“Yes.” Ophelia rises, the red fabric flaring at her feet, “This one, too.” 

Horatio feels his mouth drop open, “Really?”

She nods quickly, a grin blossoming on her lips. 

She as she walks, “I did that tapestry above my bed. And the embroidery piece Hamlet’s hanging in his dormitory.” 

Horatio steps further in, stunned, and studies the weaving above her bed. It’s of a huntress, bow drawn, atop her horse, dogs at her feet. The moon washes the scene of thread in fabric in a soft blue glow. The Greek clothes, the symbols surrounding her- it’s Artemis. 

Horatio smiles giddy, like a boy.

She retrieves the hairbrush from her bedside table, and shrugs a hesitant shrug, “Or, at least, he told me he would hang it there.” 

“The Sophoclean verse? He has,” Horatio assures, still ogling at the detail of Artemis’s hair, “This is marvelous.” 

Ophelia moves back to her vanity, and confronts her reflected image again. Delicately, tactfully, she picks up another section of her hair which mirrors the placement of the other side. She brushes, and braids.

Her voice fills with cautious hope, “Is it?”

“Of course it is,” Horatio begins his walk back to the doorway, his voice dripping with sincerity, “My mother was a seamstress by trade, but she never made anything like this.”

“She also had you, did she not?” Ophelia sighs politely, returning to herself, “The only thing worse than idle hands are idle minds, isn’t that the saying?” 

He turns back to her, tilting his head in confusion. Something about her disposition wavers, cracks, and quiets. One of her fingers slips in her hair, she recovers seamlessly. 

“I don’t have much of anything to do around here.” She finishes the second braid, pinning it back with its companion, “Except sew.”

Horatio hums, hovering in the doorway. She cleans her vanity, an ‘out’ long has since passed over the conversational horizon. Ophelia rises, retrieving a basket from under her bed. His hands twitch to help her as she begins to fold up the gown, but he isn’t sure what he’s even doing in here anymore. She hasn’t told him to leave.

Distantly, he hears the noises of the party. Background chatter, laughter, and the sounds of glassware hitting forks all fade into ambient background noise. He distantly hears a glass break, something about “Gertrude’s clumsy hands,” and more laughter.

Horatio looks back to the tapestry above her headboard. The dress in the basket. He thinks back to embroidery in Hamlet’s room, how clean and artfully the sewn cursive looked. 

“Idle hands,” He starts, “And as for steady hands?”

Her smirk is back, “Oh, they make pretty dresses.”

“And spill wine on themselves?” 

Ophelia pauses in her motions, but returns to her folding, only slightly bothered.

“On purpose.” Horatio tries again, “Why?”

She sighs, but doesn’t draw in, she deposits the dress in the basket gracelessly, “Hamlet does not yet know how to convince his father or my father of anything, if you cannot tell,”

Ophelia blows out her bedside candle. And in one swift motion, kicks the basket to the wall beside her door. Horatio startles.

Crossing the room, she stands beside him in her doorway for, and does nothing. She just looks up at him, back pressed to the wall, arms folded in front of her. Not politely, perhaps defensively, but most likely as way of defiance, if the look in her eye tells the truth. Maybe she’s challenging him, like at table. 

Ophelia speaks softly, quietly, like it’s a secret. But her posture, the look in her eyes- she knows deep down it isn’t.

“And, well, neither do I,” Her arms drop, “But one of us is going to have to try.” 

With a spinning turn, she hikes up her skirt and passes him, returning to the dining room. Horatio’s eyes, filling with curiosity, trail after her long before his feet do. 

Final conclusion, twice revised: Horatio is fond of Ophelia.

**Author's Note:**

> the author is dead and all that dribble but if you interpret ophelia and horatio's budding bromance as romantic i will die.
> 
> thanks for reading! follow @anticharismatic on tumbr!


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